"Shoot and cry" used to just be an Israeli cliche about the guilt soldiers felt after committing unspeakable acts while serving the Israeli occupation. Now it appears to have become official military doctrine. The New York Times has picked up the story of the soldier testimonies from Gaza. From the Ethan Bronner article "Soldiers’ Accounts of Gaza Killings Raise Furor in Israel":
Amir Marmor, a 33-year-old history graduate student in Jerusalem and a
military reservist, said in an interview with The New York Times that
he was stunned to discover the way civilian casualties were discussed
in training discussions before his tank unit entered Gaza in January.
"Shoot and don’t worry about the consequences,” was the message from
the top commanders, he said. Speaking of a lieutenant colonel who
briefed the troops, Mr. Marmor said, “His whole demeanor was extremely
gung ho. This is very, very different from my usual experience. I have
been doing reserve duty for 12 years, and it was always an issue how to
avoid causing civilian injuries. He said in this operation we are not
taking any chances. Morality aside, we have to do our job. We will cry
about it later.”
Bronner tries to help the Israelis cover their tracks with the usual justifications that the proportion of civilians killed was low, but he can't escape the fact that the plan all along seems to have been to intentionally kill civilians. Bronner quotes Aron Ezrahi, a political scientist at Hebrew University:
Unfortunately, I think that selective use of killing civilians has
been very much on the agenda for fighting terror . . . The army believes that a weak spot of Israeli
deterrence is its strong commitment not to kill civilians, and there
has grown the sense that it might have to temporarily overcome that
weakness in order to restore deterrence.
A "group of the world's most experienced judges and human rights investigators" renewed calls for a war crimes investigation into the Gaza war. Today Richard Falk, the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, said the Israeli attack "would seem to constitute a war crime of the greatest magnitude under international law." If there was a policy to intentionally kill civilians in Gaza there needs to be accountability. These soliders are now talking in an effort to help ease their conscience and share their concerns about the direction of their country. I hope they will be just as willing to testify in court.
Funny how when a headline ends in a question mark, the answer to the question is almost always "no".
In this case, the answer must be "no". The numbers simply do not sustain any other conclusion. Only someone who is delusional or not bothering to think about it.
Israel has over 170,000 active duty personnel (not counting the reserves). For this major offensive, lets assume that they sent in 2% of them, that is 3400. If anyone has a reliable estimate on how many actually went in, please say so, I bet it was more than 3400 though. Now, suppose they had a policy of killing civilians, but sucked at killing civilians. I mean, suppose they were so bad at it that in a whole city, they only managed to kill one civilian per day per soldier. How many civilians would be dead in the course of the 22 day war? Answer: 74,800. Compare to how many civilians actually died: about 400. For those of you keeping score, with lowball estimates of killing ability, the civilian casualties with a "kill civilians" policy would be over 150 times larger than the real number.
More realistic numbers, with more like 10,000 soldiers and a dozen civilians killed per day per soldier would get you… well, they would have run out of Gazans in 12.5 days.
So while there may have been a few soldiers who didn't care whether civilians got killed, there is a huge difference between that an a "policy to kill civilians".
Frankly, Adam, it is posts such as this one that go the farthest to demonstrate your utter contempt for truth and utter hatred of the Jewish people.
Oops, should have been "Only someone who is delusional or not bothering to think about it could think the answer was yes".
What a load of bullshit Thom.
900+ civilians died. 200-300 police officers died. 200+ Hamas fighters died.
It was mostly civilians and police officers.
Just like the Lebanon War in 2006, when Israel deliberately killed civilians.
Its funny how you racist/bigot Zionists have to lie over and over to make you shitty country look respectable.
And the Human Rights Watch report and the US Army War College report found that Hezbollah didn't use human shields. That the battles took place away from civilians. That they purposefully avoided civilian intermingling. This was based on testimonies from Israeli soldiers.
So once again, the human shield bullshit is dismissed.
Thom, you hasbara spouting propagandist, if your thinking reflects the thinking of IDF leadership, then yes, by all accounts, war crimes were perpetrated by Israel at the highest levels. The only difference between you and the IDF soldiers is that you don't even bother to "cry later." You have a despicable lack of conscience.
From Washington Post, here's the kind of wanton murder that US Zionist fifth columnists and its collaborators are enabling with our tax dollars:
'One squad commander said that although his group had experienced limited combat in its area, an officer ordered an elderly Palestinian woman shot as she walked along a road 100 yards from a house the soldiers had commandeered…'
'The other squad leader described an incident in which a mother and two children walked toward an Israeli position from a prohibited area and were killed.
"The sharpshooter saw a woman and children approaching him, closer than the lines he was told no one should pass. He shot them straight away," the squad leader said.'
link to seattletimes.nwsource.com
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So let's see. That's one elderly Palestinian woman, one mother and her two children, gunned down by Israel snipers. Crime? Walking in Gaza, and being Palestinian.
Now who wants to argue that the Democrats paying for all this aren't themselves fascists under cover of progressivism? Red Fascists, they used to call these. Killers posing as victims, like their Israeli buddies. I call them wolves in sheep’s clothing, and they're even worse than Republicans, because they pretend to be tolerant, scientific, and enlightened, even as they snuff out women in children with their Jewish Zionist partners and sweep it all under the rug.
Bush may have been a sociopath, but he never went to the lengths that the Dems go to cover it up, and he never ran as a "progressive."
Again. If Israel was intentionally targeting civilians why were the casualties so low? Hamas is good at shooting rockets and running, but not much in a fight. Therefore no resistance. Logic would dictate that with modern weapons and no resistance, if Israel was intentionally targeting civilians, there should have been hundreds of thousands of casualties. Not a few hundred.
Q: Was there an intentional policy to kill civilians in Gaza?
A: Duh.
Next question!
Julian, 991 civilian casualties is low? 200-300 police officers (many who JUST graduated) is low?
The police officers graduation bombing was discussed and debated by the IDF's legal team months in advance. They were seeing if they could get away with it.
Anyways, not like you care. Just keep referring to your hasbara talking points.
Completely agree with you there, Ed.
More like 900 Hamas fighters and 300 civilians. But the thing about non-uniformed illegal combatants is, we'll never know. And before you think about prosecutions, remember that Hezbollah was scouting the Hague. They know how to handle biased prosecutions. Cute.
@Eurosabra
Actually, we do know. The identities of most of the dead are known. Last count I saw in an article had about 600 identified members of terrorist groups, about 300 women, children (15 and under), and old men (65+, I think) and 300 men between the ages of 16 and 64 whose affiliations had not been determined yet. The Israelis estimated that about 2/3 of the undetermined were members of terrorist groups. Oh, and the 300 women etc, included at least a few suicide bombers.
The "Hamas police officers" helped massacre the Fatah faction in Gaza. They are Hamas terrorists by another name.
The unfortunate truth is that Israel is dealing with an enemy that has no hesitation about using women in civilian clothing and children as terrorists. "IDF shot a woman in civilian clothing who was approaching their position" isn't exactly a big surprise when Hamas sent women in civilian clothing to get close to IDF soldiers and blow themselves and the soldiers up.
In war, if you look like a threat, you get treated like a threat. Blame Hamas for making women in civilian clothing look like a threat.
@LD
The Palestinian definition of civilian casualty includes Hamas terrorists fighting out of uniform in violation of the laws of war, suspected collaborators murdered by Hamas, the families/human shields of Hamas terrorists who were warned that the terrorists and their homes were targets but chose to keep them there anyway, and Palestinians killed in secondary explosions when the Israeli attacks set off the explosives and munitions the Palestinians stored in their houses and mosques.
BTW, even if it had been 900 civilian casualties, that would still be far lower than the _hourly_ rate of civilian deaths would have been with thousands of soldiers trying to kill civilians.
A certain kind of Jew considers all non-Jews "goy," "cattle," "terrorist," so it's really no surprise that Zionists throw the word around so indiscriminately. Coming from the mouth of a Jewish Zionist, what "terrorist" usually really means is goy anti-Zionist resistance fighter. Jewish Bolsheviks also used to label the anti-Communist resistance "terrorist."
One day Ed will manage to write a comment that doesn't include any red-baiting, but I shan't hold my breath waiting.
Thom, for some reason you seem to have read Phil's question "Was there an intentional Israeli policy in Gaza to kill civilians?"
as "Was there an intentional Israeli policy in Gaza to kill as many civilians as was humanly possible?"
To be charitable, I will assume that this is attributable to the rampant bovine stupidity you display in your every posting, rather than any malign attempt to mislead.